


To Let Go

by GoldenTruth813



Series: selfless [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-25 19:48:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4973794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldenTruth813/pseuds/GoldenTruth813
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Draco has never been brave or selfless, but he thinks maybe letting harry go is the bravest and most selfless thing he'll ever do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Let Go

Draco has been called many things in his life, but self-less is not one of them. He is not noble and is not brave.

Harry is though.

Harry.

He’d never imagined a world where he could feel so much for one person but he does, and there were days where he feels like he just might explode from it all. It was so much easier to hate him, to let the resentment and jealousy bubble away at the surface buffering away anything real.

He can handle a lot of things, But not this…..not this intensity.

He feels exposed when Harry looks at him, as if he can see past everything he’s tried to be and somehow sees something he might one day be. Draco doesn’t see a different future, doesn’t see a world where he is anything other than everything he has always thought he wanted to be.

And yet, sometimes in the dark of night, when Harry isn’t looking at him Draco is free to look back at the other boy instead. And in those moments he knows Harry isn’t the only one to see things that are better left unsaid. He sees Harry for everything he is; every single thing he thinks he is supposed to be and every single thing he thinks he will never be.

Even after months together there is still so much fighting. They’ve always been like that he thinks, and Draco knows the words between them are like poison; too strong and destined to destroy.

Draco thinks he is beginning to know what it means to be destroyed. He feels it in his heart every time Harry touches him. He knows it in his soul when he agrees to let Voldemort mark him, agrees to help a side he no longer believes in.

Only it isn’t the dark that will destroy him, but Harry.

Draco has never been called selfless before and he knows he won’t even now. When people look at him, when Harry looks at him, he knows the things they will say and what they will see - weak, coward, evil.

But Draco knows that letting Harry go without telling him the truth is the bravest, most selfless thing he will ever do, because he knows Harry better than he knows himself. And Harry doesn’t need to say the words “I would give up everything to save you” because his eyes say it every time he looks at him; it’s in the way his fingers have begun to tremble when he touches Draco as if he knows one of them is going to burn in this war and the scary thing is that Draco knows Harry would burn in his place.

And so when Harry begs and pleads, Draco pretends to not care. And when Draco talks he makes sure his words hurt enough to make Harry leave, because he knows it is the only protection he can offer Harry.

It isn’t enough but it is all he has and for the first time in his life Draco thinks he understands what sacrifice is. And as he watches Harry walk away with tears in his eyes Draco thinks being selfless isn’t all it’s cut out to be.


End file.
